Authenticity and the fear of selling out: How academics and entrepreneurs leverage vulnerability to face the pressures of the mainstream

The entrepreneurial landscape demands a different approach to business: one that bucks against norms and standards and instead develops innovative and disruptive solutions. This journey is fraught with all the challenges that come from venturing into new fields that lack the relative safety of employment. The experience is not unlike a PhD student struggling to establish themselves in academia.

Kai DeMott and Nathalie Repenning, both recent PhD graduates and assistant professors in the Department of Accountancy, detailed the experience with co-authors in the paper, "Navigating the PhD journey: a collective consideration of junior academics in qualitative accounting and management research," published in Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management.

PhD candidates and entrepreneurs dedicate themselves to their craft. The PhD candidates and assistant professors who took part in this study recall their emotions and disillusionment, particularly as they juggle between prioritizing the authenticity and purpose of their work, and the expectations of mainstream academia to “publish or perish.” This conflict can be seen amongst entrepreneurs who must balance their novel solutions with the expectations of the market that they try to break into. It also alludes to the internal conflict of having to sell out.

The article’s authors express the overwhelming nature of showcasing their discoveries in the field of accounting and social sciences, all in the face of a “corporatized” education sector, where rankings and publications are valued over the actual learning experience.

Part of the vulnerability that an entrepreneur would face is the expectation that is set upon them by society. When we think of entrepreneurs, we recall the names of successful CEOs who rose above these challenges, but with the high failure rate of startups (up to 90% depending on the field), your average entrepreneur struggles between the innovative product they sell, the process of creating this innovation, the persons that these entrepreneurs themselves happen to be, and the place or context in which this journey takes place.

As one of the participants shared in the article, “Most people don’t write what they really think or what they would like to write. Writing a paper should be an artistic realization by a person. It should change the way people see the world and make it better. It has nothing to do with rankings.”

That said, while this entrepreneurial challenge does not become easier over time, the authors point out that they do become more comfortable in the trial-and-error experience, even becoming enamored by this activity. The eventual success of earning your PhD and ultimately finding a job in a series of ups and downs is described as both overwhelming and fulfilling. This self-learning process, say the authors, is still a draining experience.

While the PhD candidates strive to innovate in terms of inspiring new knowledge on existing knowledge, and discover about themselves as they do, this has also impacted their identities and relationships as vulnerable people. As another participant explains, the resulting self-doubt makes these academic entrepreneurs question whether they are “far enough in my process at the given time to make the PhD I want.”

The participants in this study discuss how they address these challenges by embracing their inexperience, which itself has fostered both curiosity and the willingness to challenge status quo. Through this embracing of their fragility and humanity, they slowly but surely develop the ability to calibrate their level of acceptance of mainstream academia and their own entrepreneurial spirit and work towards achieving a balance and confidence in their abilities as they grow as academics and try to meet the demands of performance measurements and controls set by academic establishments.

This reflective article provides insights that will resonate with entrepreneurs. It demonstrates the humanity of the candidates, and eventually successful academic entrepreneurs, as they acknowledge their fragility in their personal and professional struggles towards sharing their discoveries. These lessons are equally relevant to business entrepreneurs, as embracing their own fragility, humanity and authenticity can help them stand out in a crowd and persevere in the face of difficulty.